Kotabe
“Chestnut”

?

Taste:
4

Texture:
3.5

Novelty:
4

All
scores out of 5

The
simplest way to describe these is to say that they taste and feel
like you’re eating uncooked, sweet chestnut ravioli. Maybe it’s
better to say that they taste like what you’d want uncooked,
sweet chestnut ravioli to taste like. In this box are 5 small dumplings
filled with a small lump of chestnut paste. The dumplings are made
of mochi, a dough that’s made of pounded sticky rice. Mochi
is most commonly found in ball form, often filled with different pastes.
It’s a super stretchy dough and it has a slight rice flavour.

These are a little different
than regular mochi because rather than a ball you have a thin layer
of mochi. Because the mochi is so much thinner, it lets the flavour
and texture of the filling shine a bit more. I also find that the
texture is a bit lighter and soft, rather than stretchy. This is probably
one of the best mochi treats I’ve ever tried, it’s even
made me curious about what other kinds of mochi treats are out there.

The problem with these
is their availability, I’m pretty sure they’re only available
in Kyoto, Japan. These ones are also the smaller version of these
Kotabe, which I found on the train station platform in Kyoto station.
The regular ones seem to be about twice the size, and I’m not
sure how well that ratio would work compared to these awesome little
ones. There was just something so nice about the two bite size, in
particular the amount of mochi to filling ratio.